


adventure

by mikimi (nauticalwarrior)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Romance, this was for a commission!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 03:57:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15525555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nauticalwarrior/pseuds/mikimi
Summary: Aradia and Feferi go exploring! Set on Alternia, sometime before Aradia died.





	adventure

**Author's Note:**

> This was a commission for the lovely Sandy at https://imstuckathome12.tumblr.com/ !

The moonlight casts the soil in shades of pink and green, paints the ruins neon. Aradia looks up and notes that it’s cloudless tonight, with both moons close to full in the sky above them. The effect it has on the mostly-destroyed hives is amazing-- what should be boring, grey slabs of stone is transformed into chalkboards streaked with violet and teal, shadows of near-black shifting as the leaves in the single tree nearby twist in the breeze. 

Aradia’s eyes catch on Feferi. The heiress is dressed in land dweller’s clothes at her own insistence, to “keep things from looking fishy.” This means that she’s wearing one of Aradia’s skirts, a long, dark brown swathe of fabric that lands mid-calf on her. She’s got one of Aradia’s shirts on, too, but inside out, so as not to show the sign. It’d look strange if they’d both walked here with the same one, after all. She’s still obviously a high blood in disguise, especially with her jewelry still on, but they hadn’t run into any trolls on the way over. Seeing the heiress marching through the ruins, pink moonlight dancing over her face and hair, shoulders draped in Aradia’s own shirt, has a strange effect on Aradia’s breathing. She ignores it, stepping forward.

“What do you think?” She asks, looking over to Feferi. The expression of awe and excitement on her face is contagious, and Aradia can feel a smile creeping onto her own lips.

“It’s amazing!” She looks around, taking a step forward. The neon lighting plays tricks with the freckles on her skin, makes her look like a statue carved from precious gemstones. “Water you thinking happened to the trolls here?”

Aradia shrugs, moving closer, picking her steps carefully. There’s nothing too dangerous here, but she doesn’t want to slip and hurt herself. The stones aren’t sharp like glass would be, but there is quite a few of them, and they aren’t arranged in any sort of order. 

“I think it got hit by drones, probably...” She glances around, looking at the plant life that’s started to grow over the collapsed hives, twisty, gangly grasses and a few scattered flowers that haven’t quite finished blooming. “Five or six sweeps ago?” 

“Whoa!” Feferi bends down, dragging her fingers across the surface of a fairly flat stone, probably from a ceiling. “So this could have been destroyed before I was a guppy?”

“Yeah!” Aradia nods, smiling. “I think if we walk a bit further, we should have a chance at seeing some more intact stuff.” She points over to their left, at a structure a good bit away. It’s taller than any of the other abandoned hives in sight, and Aradia can see at least one block still standing. “See? I bet that one’s safe to go inside.”

Feferi lights up, looking even more excited than Aradia had expected. “Really? Do you think whale find somefin school?” She clasps her hands together and stumbles over the rocks, moving so close to Aradia they’re almost touching. Aradia thinks that the heiress can probably feel her body heat from this distance. 

“Maybe!” Aradia feels a hint of a blush rising to her skin, not that it’ll be visible in this kind of light. “Let’s go check it out!” 

She carefully moves forward, listening to the crunch of Feferi’s boots on the sand and stone behind her. This is a pretty nice part of Alternia in general, not near the sea but close to a lake, so the soil is sandy and littered with tiny shells. The lake is just small enough that nothing dangerous lives in it, so it must have been a good source of water to the trolls that once lived in these hives. Aradia’s been here before-- just to scout it out, make sure it’d be okay to take Feferi here. It’s a good ruin for beginners because the buildings are old but have only been uninhabited fairly recently. That, and it’s not an area frequented by scavengers, so they’re probably safe from other trolls. 

“Hey, Aradia!” Feferi calls to her, and Aradia turns around to look. “Looked what I just fished out of the sand!”

In her hand is a shining carapace about the size of her palm, a glimmering crimson disc attached to a silver chain. The color is remarkably like Aradia’s own blood, and she wonders what long-dead troll wore it sweeps in the past. It’s iridescent in the mixed moonlight, pink and green sparkling on the deep red. 

“That’s amazing...” Aradia, finally close enough, takes Feferi’s hands in her own, examining the glittery pendant. Feferi’s hands and the pendant are about the same temperature, and it takes more effort than it should for Aradia to look at the artifact and not Feferi’s neatly kept fingers. 

“Yeah! I saw somefin red, so I thought I’d take a hook at it.” Feferi leans forward, eyes glued to Aradia’s shirt. “Oh, it’s the same color as your sign!”

Aradia feels the heat rise to her face as the heiress’s eyes move from her chest to her face, an open, excited expression on her face. “It is, yeah. Maybe a rust blood had it, way back when?”

Feferi giggles. “Maybe, yeah! Hey, Aradia, would it be school if I kept it?”

“Go ahead,” Aradia says. She doesn’t think she’d be able to say no to anything Feferi asked for right now. Plus, jewelry like that is better suited to Fef anyway. 

“Shell yeah!” Feferi leans back, breaking the spell that had fallen over Aradia. She reaches back, trying to get the chain over her head, but it catches on one of her horns. Giving her head a shake, she tries again, only to catch it on the other horn.

“Here, let me...” Aradia steps to Feferi’s side and gently untangles the silver chain from the ochre surface of Fef’s horn, letting the pendant fall into place at her neck. 

“Thanks, Aradia!” She grins wide, her teeth sharp and clean and shiny, before she bounces off further into the ruins. Aradia doesn’t bother hiding a small smile and follows after her, keeping an eye on the heiress’s back as they move on ahead. This part of the ruin has been thoroughly destroyed, making something close to a paved pathway into the heart of the collapsed hives. As the walls on either side of them grow taller, less damaged by the wind and by wildlife, the shadows grow long and dark, a sharp contrast to the bright patches of light. Aradia wonders if the moons off-world, where the adult trolls explore and conquer, are quite this bright. As she watches the pink moon’s light set Feferi’s hair aflame with a fuchsia glow, she thinks it’s impossible for any other moon to compare to the ones she and Feferi share.

Feferi, as if on cue, turns back to look at Aradia. The green moon has moved in the sky so that it’s behind her, and the effect gives Feferi a pink hue with a halo of glowing green behind her.

“Aradia, we should totally do this again somebay soon!” She twirls in place, looking up to the sky. “It’s reel-y pretty out here!” 

“Yeah,” Aradia says, smiling at her heiress. “It really is.”

  
  
  



End file.
